How to Learn a Foreign Language by Dr. Paul Pimsleur

Curl up with Dr. Pimsleur

This book is all the things most language learning tools are not. It’s direct, full of useful pearls of wisdom that are easily incorporated into one’s day-to-day study of a new language. It’s clear and well written, and nowhere does “academic-speak” sneak into the text.

Paul Pimsleur’s theories, as expressed in How to Learn a Foreign Language, are deceptively simple. In his own teaching, Dr. Pimsleur saw students repeatedly failing and being turned off of what to him was the most exciting challenge in the world: learning a new language.

This book speaks equally to the different kinds of would-be language learners—from those who thought themselves scarred for life by high school Spanish hell to the more confident learners who want to approach the full range of different languages.

How to Learn a Foreign Language was first published in 1980, 4 years after Dr. Pimsleur’s death. We are proud to be reissuing this remarkable book now in a handsome hardcover edition and as a digital book, in this, Pimsleur Language Programs’ 50th Anniversary year.